Archive for July, 2010

Speed bumps may be added to Reliez Station Road between Pleasant Hill Road and Olympic Boulevard if the neighborhood’s residents vote that way.

The City of Lafayette has sent ballots out to residents in the area. The ballots are to be returned to the city in early August. Once the ballots are received, the city will decide whether or not to install the speed bumps.

That section of Reliez Station Road is often victim to speeding, as drivers use it as a shortcut when many cars are on the road. The “shortcut” allows drivers to skip over the often busy intersection of Pleasant Hill Road and Olympic Boulevard.

Petar’s will be hosting a pub trivia night on Wednesday with charity in mind. During the trivia night, donations will be collected for the Family Giving Tree.

The Family Giving Tree is a charity working to give children in need backpacks and school supplies for the upcoming school year. They were able to provide 13,843 backpacks last year and are looking to top that this year.

The trivia night will begin at 6:30 p.m. Petar’s is located at 32 Lafayette Circle in Lafayette.

You may be following the tale of a few city officials in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, who the L.A. Times reported this week are making ridiculous amounts of money.

City manager: Nearly $800,000 a year. Assistant City Manager: $376,000. Police chief: $475,000. And the part-time City Council? Four of the five make about $100,000 each. The fifth found out just recently he’s the only one making $8,000.

The city manager, assistant city manager and police chief have agreed to resign. Their lucrative salaries were built into their contracts.

But what about the council (whom residents are also demanding resign)? How did they become so well paid?

A state law enacted in 2005 limits the pay of council members in “general law” cities, a reform prompted by the high salaries that leaders in the neighboring city of South Gate bestowed on themselves.

But the year the law passed, the Bell City Council held a special election with only one item on the ballot. It asked voters to approve a measure calling for Bell to convert to a “charter” city.

The move was billed as one that would give the city more local control, and there was no mention that it exempted Bell from the salary regulations. All five council members signed the ballot statement in favor of Measure A.

Total voter turnout? Three-hundred ninety, with 86 percent in favor.

There are two points to make about this story. One is that, as many Lafayette residents argued during the charter city debate, there can be so-called unforeseen implications of becoming a charter city. Charter cities have authority over “municipal affairs,” but that standard is hard to understand, in large part because the courts have been so inconsistent in defining it. I doubt Bell’s residents knew when they were voting for a charter they were giving the council control to exempt themselves from salary limits.

But the other point, and it’s an important one, is that its unlikely this would have happened in Lafayette. Had the document gone to the voters, it likely would have included a clause granting Lafayette only those powers afforded charter cities specifically mentioned in the adopted charter. In other words, unless the charter says you can do it, you can’t do it. So if the council wanted to exempt itself from salary limits, language allowing them to do so would have needed to be in the original charter or in an amendment later approved by the voters.

Bells charter didn’t include such limitations. And it obviously cost them.

Do not expect to see the BART fares reduced any time soon. The BART board decided to postpone the vote regarding the previously proposed fare cut at their meeting last night.

The board did not schedule a date to discuss the fare reduction at a future meeting, and it is unclear whether that discussion will even be necessary.

Following a 6-3 preliminary vote by the board in favor of the cut, the public has expressed feelings that BART should instead use the funds to clean trains or save for emergencies. BART Director Joel Keller has expressed that he would change his vote now to oppose the fare reduction, pushing the votes in favor to five, one below the minimum of six needed to pass a fare change.

The new bocce courts in Rancho Laguna Park could be happening. You may recall about a month ago the Moraga Town Council voted to waive $4,900 worth of permitting fees for the new courts. Since the total number of fees at that time was estimated to be about $7,700, the bocce club said they’d rather not build the courts if they had to pay the difference in fees.

A re-evaluation of the project site, however, appears to have changed things. The new courts are proposed for a little-used section of the park that has sand volleyball courts. A large chunk of the original fee estimate came from the presumed need to grade the site, said parks director Jay Ingram. But now the town is looking at just laying the new courts directly on top of the sand, likely eliminating the need to do any grading and bringing the fees down to about $300, plus $100 for each tree removed. That’s well under the $4,900 limit set by the council.

Ingram said he’s optimistic the courts will be built and is waiting for design plans from one of the bocce club’s members.

The BART board will be making their final vote on a plan to reduce BART fares by approximately three percent for a period of three months. While the fare reduction was approved in a preliminary vote on June 10 by a vote of 6-3, there is a chance that the final vote tonight may not allow the fare reduction plan to pass.

After surveying the public, the BART board has found that the majority of the public would prefer the current funds surplus to be saved or used for cleaning the trains.

Because six votes are needed to pass a fare change, only one board member needs to change their opinion from the June 10 preliminary vote.